Opening Moves

by Steven James

  “The last three pages, yes. And you’ll want to closely examine the victimology here. Find out how the two couples targeted in these crimes are connected to each other.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “Of course.”

  Time to pick his brain. “I’ve been thinking, Dr. Werjonic—”

  “Calvin, please.”

  “Calvin—I’ve been thinking…The guy who killed the women in Ohio and Illinois passed by Indiana.” I shared one little piece of information that wasn’t exactly public knowledge yet, but I kept it vague enough to feel comfortable telling him. “Of the other missing persons cases in Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana we’re looking at—”

  “Let me guess—you don’t have any in Indiana that fit the MO or victim demographic from those cases or the two out-of-state victims.”

  “Correct. I’m wondering why he would skip that geographic region.”

  “That, my boy, is a very good question.” He stared into space for a moment, then consulted his pocket watch again. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I must be going. I have a lunch appointment and a short drive ahead of me. It seems a writer is working on a book and wanted to interview me while I was in town. Investigating some cold cases, as it were.”

  I thought back to my conversation with Thorne yesterday afternoon when he mentioned that a true crime writer used Griffin as one of her sources. He’d brought her up again at our briefing a few minutes ago. “It’s not a true crime book, is it?”

  “It is.”

  “The writer’s name wouldn’t, by any chance, be Heather Isle?”

  “No, a gent named Slate Seagirt…” Calvin nodded, then smiled faintly. “Ah. Clever. A nom de plume.”

  A pseudonym…?

  I processed that aloud: “Both ‘heather’ and ‘slate’ can mean gray…An ‘isle’ is an island…” I hadn’t heard the word “seagirt” before, but its meaning was easy enough to decipher: “Seagirt—girted by the sea.”

  “Yes.” Calvin looked pleased that I’d ventured a cursory guess at the word’s etymology. “Surrounded by water.”

  “What’s the cold case about?”

  “Something concerning the tragic unsolved murder of a young girl whose body was found in a tree house.”

  56

  I stared at him. “Mindy Wells?”

  “I wasn’t told her name. Are you familiar with the case?”

  I wondered if I should tell him what happened to Mindy back when I was in high school, and after a brief deliberation I decided it would be fine as long as I stuck to the facts in the public record.

  When I was done, he carefully deliberated on what I’d said. “Perhaps what intrigues me the most is not that this chap contacted me but that he contacted me now. With your connection to the case, it’s too convenient. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “As a matter of fact, neither do I.”

  “A man after my own heart.” His voice was softer now; he was deep in thought.

  Someone knuckle-rapped on the door, then pressed it open before I could invite him in. It was Radar and he looked anxious. Obviously he had something he wanted to share because he jumped right in: “Pat, we might have some—” Only then did he notice Calvin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, no. It’s quite alright.” Calvin stood. “I was just on my way out.” He extended his hand to me. “I look forward to speaking with you again soon, Detective. So I can share with you a description of this gray island.”

  “Call me.” We shook hands again. “As soon as your meal is over.”

  “Yes, of course.” He drew on his overcoat, then doffed an imaginary cap to Radar before exiting, but only after letting his eyes linger one more time on the maps on the corkboard.

  “Who was that?” Radar asked.

  “That was Dr. Calvin Werjonic.”

  “The guy you mentioned at the briefing?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment Radar seemed distracted, then caught himself, returned abruptly to the conversation: “Sorry, as I was saying, we might have something.”

  “What is it?”

  “The receipts. We found a discrepancy.”

  Oh yeah, I liked discrepancies. Discrepancies are always a good thing.

  “What discrepancy?

  “Well, it might be just an accounting error, but—”

  “What discrepancy?”

  “It seems there was one item that, well…” He said nothing more, just handed me a receipt. Ralph, who’d been walking past the open door, saw us and joined us in the conference room.

  “It seems there was one item that what?” I asked Radar.

  “There was one item that Griffin sold that he didn’t buy.”

  57

  A chill.

  I gazed unbelievingly at the receipt.

  The item Griffin had sold but didn’t buy was a book of nursery rhymes with one specific page missing.

  Oh.

  No.

  I snatched my things off my desk. “Ralph, we’re going to need another search warrant. There’s more in Griffin’s house.”

  “How do you know?”

  “‘Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.’ The nursery rhyme. There was a copy of the song under Jenna’s pillow—she’s the seven-year-old we found dead three years ago. She’d been raped, then buried alive in a shallow grave. The song had been ripped out of a book. We identified which nursery rhyme book it was from but we never found the book itself.” I slapped the receipt down on the table. “Griffin sold it. But he never bought it.”

  I expected an expletive but got only shocked silence instead.

  “I’m going to Fort Atkinson.” I pulled out my car keys. “Have the local authorities get to his house now and hold him on something, I don’t care what, and get me a search warrant for the rest of the house by the time I get up there. Fax it to the Fort Atkinson Police Department.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m coming with you, Pat,” Radar said.

  “We’ll take my car.”

  We hurried to the parking garage, my thoughts running through everything once again, tying threads together into one dark, terrible fabric.

  You matched the semen found at the scene of Jenna’s murder to that found on Mindy Wells’s body. Dr. Werjonic is meeting the true crime author, the guy who’s writing a book about her…

  I recalled the items in Griffin and Mallory’s bedroom that weren’t for sale.

  A handheld mirror on Mallory’s dresser. A nice mirror. Ornate.

  A diamond ring in her jewelry box.

  A stuffed dog on the bed.

  There’s more. Something else…

  In my head, I ran through the complete lyrics to the song:

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird don’t sing,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

  And if that diamond ring turns brass,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

  And if that looking glass gets broke,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a billy goat.

  And if that billy goat don’t pull,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a cart and bull.

  And if that cart and bull turn over,

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover.

  And if that dog named Rover won’t bark.

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a horse and cart.

  And if that horse and cart fall down,

  Well, you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

  We had the diamond ring, the looking glass (the mirror), and, if I was right about the stuffed dog, we had “the dog named Rover.”

  What else?

  Oh. Yes.

  There’d been a ceramic bird resting next to the Manson Bible in the living room. No price tag on it. I’m no expert on birds, but I had a distinct feeling I knew what kind of bird that was.

  A m
ockingbird.

  Which meant that if Griffin really was collecting the items from the song, we needed a billy goat, a cart and bull, a horse and cart. I doubted that he would have live animals sequestered somewhere, but if that dog really did signify “the dog named Rover,” then it was likely he had other ways of representing the other animals too—perhaps more stuffed animals, toys, or maybe photographs or pictures of some type. Who knows.

  Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

  A looking glass.

  A mockingbird.

  I wondered what the items represented to him.

  Victims? Could each relate to another victim?

  Hush, little baby…

  He’d called Mallory “baby” twice while we were at the house. A harmless term of endearment, yes, unless it meant something a lot deeper to him.

  Radar and I jumped into my car and took off.

  58

  As I drove, Radar read me the file that Ralph had put together last night on Griffin.

  “Okay, so Timothy went to high school in Deerfield, dropped out when he was a sophomore, eventually got his GED and worked for a decade in a series of odd jobs in Milwaukee—three years delivering garbage, McDonald’s burger flipper, construction. Then a plumber’s apprentice in Beaver Dam. Looks like none of them was a good fit for him. Attended one year of tech school, dropped out. Evidently, he started collecting and selling this paraphernalia soon after that.”

  “Beaver Dam’s just twelve miles from Horicon. He could easily have known the area.” I remembered the coats in his closet. “He’s a hunter.”

  “The tree house. Goose hunting?”

  “Possibly.”

  Radar was quiet.

  “Never anything to do with law enforcement, though?” I asked. “Did he enter and drop out of any police academies?”

  “Nothing’s listed. Nope.”

  “Man, we gotta find out how he’s trafficking stuff that ought to be in police evidence rooms.”

  “No kidding.”

  “What else?”

  “He’s lived in Fort Atkinson since June 1996. Mallory moved in with him about a month later on the day she turned eighteen.”

  “Which means—”

  “He had a relationship with her before that, when she was still a minor.”

  I felt my hands tighten around the steering wheel. “How do we know when she moved in?”

  “She changed the address on her driver’s license.”

  After Radar finished reading the files, we were silent and I was thinking about the case of Jenna Natara, the investigation that wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I slept.

  “Pat, I know you’re angry.”

  “Don’t tell me not to be, don’t—”

  “No, I get it. It’s okay. It’s a good thing.”

  “It’s good that I’m angry?”

  “It shows you care. As my dad used to say, anger is the cousin of love.”

  I looked at him quizzically. “What does that mean?”

  “The more you love something, the more angry you’ll be when that thing is threatened or attacked. If you love children, you’ll be incensed at pedophiles; if you love your wife, you’ll get angry when someone insults her; if you love endangered species, you’ll be furious when they’re hunted to the point of extinction; if you love unborn children, you’ll be outraged about abortion. Anger always, and only, runs as deep as love.”

  I’d never thought of it like that. “Your dad was a smart man.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  A thought: To find out what you truly love the most, look for what makes you the most angry.

  Anger is the cousin of love…

  I said, “You know how psychologists will tell you that no one can make you angry, that you only choose to become angry?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t remember a time ever in my life when I’ve chosen to be angry. And I’ve never met anyone who’s said to me, ‘This guy cut me off on the interstate and I decided to get angry.’”

  “Anger’s a response”—Radar was right with me—“not a choice.”

  “Right. Nobody ever chooses to become angry, we can only choose not to respond with anger. If we want to.”

  “Okay.” He could tell there was more. “And?”

  “And I’m not going to do that with Griffin.”

  “You’re going to remain angry.”

  “Yeah, and respond that way.”

  “So am I.”

  “I guess we’ll see where that leads.”

  He was quiet. “Yes, we will.”

  The trip went by fast and before I knew it I was pulling up to the side of the road in front of Timothy Griffin’s dilapidated house on the outskirts of Fort Atkinson.

  59

  Two cars from the Fort Atkinson Police Department were already at the house when we arrived.

  A sergeant whose name tag read J. CARVER met us at the porch.

  “Do you have him?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “House was empty when we got here, but since we had the search warrant…well…” He pointed to the door. “We accessed the property.”

  There was a shattered lock on the door and I liked this guy already.

  “What else?”

  “We found a false cabinet under the basement stairs. There’s a box. A bunch of toys and some children’s clothing.”

  “Show me.”

  While we were descending the steps, I could feel my heart twisting in my chest. Radar and I pulled on latex gloves.

  “They haven’t disturbed anything,” I asked Carver, “have they? The other officers?”

  “No. I made sure they didn’t touch anything until you got here.” Carver seemed like a pro and I was glad he was the one calling the shots for his team.

  We reached the basement and he led us around the back of the stairs to the place where the officers had dismantled the cabinet. The basement itself was cluttered with unfinished woodworking projects, stacks of cardboard boxes, a shotgun on the workbench where Griffin may have been working on it, an old, warped pool table.

  The square cardboard box they’d found was about half a meter tall, deep, and wide. It held a clutch of toys, some children’s clothes beneath them, and, apparently, something bulky that I couldn’t make out beneath the toys and clothing.

  The toys in the box that caught my attention right off the bat were a plastic horse about the right size for a Barbie doll to ride on and a stuffed goat. As well as two small plastic pushcarts.

  Beside them, tucked into the side of the box, was a carefully folded-up page torn from a coloring book with a sketchily colored-in bull.

  Fire rose inside me.

  I wondered if Griffin had colored in the picture himself or if an abducted child had done so.

  Despite myself, I felt something inside of me slipping, something that’d been rooted firmly for a long time in what I believed about right and wrong, about justice and mercy: I wanted Timothy Griffin out of the way for good and I wanted to be the one to take him out. And if things played out like that, I knew that afterward I wouldn’t regret it at all.

  But honestly, thinking those things frightened me.

  Keep the demons at bay.

  Keep them at bay.

  Yeah, well maybe not this time.

  As I removed the toys and then the children’s clothes—outfits that looked like they would’ve fit someone Jenna’s size—I saw what was bunched up beneath them.

  A jacket.

  Even though the arms of the coat weren’t visible, I said quietly, “There’s a small rip on the left sleeve, about halfway down.”

  Radar was on one knee beside me, looking into the box as well. “How do you know that?”

  “Because it used to be mine.”

  60

  I took the jacket out of the box.

  The rip was right where I remembered it.

  In a voice that I couldn’t help from being hushed, I explained to Radar and the other office
rs how I’d left this jacket in the tree house to cover Mindy Wells’s naked corpse. “I don’t know what happened to it after the investigation. I never saw it again.”

  How did Griffin get this? From the evidence room? But he was never a cop…

  I laid the jacket down softly, gentleness at this moment seemed to be a way of honoring the memory of Mindy Wells, then I stood and faced the four officers who’d been here when Radar and I arrived. “We need to find Griffin and Mallory. Now. Do any of you have any idea where they might be?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “He wasn’t here when he fled,” I said. “Yet somehow he knew we were coming to his house.”

  “Why do you say that?” Carver asked.

  Radar answered for me, pointing at the box. “If he was taking off for good, he wouldn’t have left that behind, especially if he knew you were coming with a search warrant.”

  So, where was he?

  The obvious: he and Mallory were just out running errands.

  Maybe.

  But we couldn’t afford to assume that right now.

  “Did you put out an APB on his car yet?” I asked Carver.

  “Yeah. So far no word.”

  The only people who knew we were going to be here were Ralph, Radar, me, the judge whom Ralph contacted…

  And the Fort Atkinson police.

  Did someone warn Griffin that the police were on their way?

  I asked Carver, “Who received the fax of the search warrant?”

  “I did.”

  “Who else besides the people in this room knew about it? Knew you were coming here?”

  He gestured toward the three other men. “I grabbed these guys while we were at the station, but when we got here we radioed dispatch our location. So it could have been anyone.”

  “No, not if you radioed in your position after you arrived. Griffin was already gone when you got here.”